They are recognizable by alternate card sizes and/or alternate card backs. I dare say that if multiplayer games were possible in MTG Arena, Historic Brawl would be a much more impactful phenomenon in the global Commander community, although I recognize that such a scenario is quite unlikely. Each player starts with 40 life, places their commander face-up in their command zone, and draws a hand of seven cards. Players are seated randomly in a circle and turns progress one player at a time in clockwise order around the table. As a celebration of the release of Unstable, silver-bordered cards were made legal From December 1, 2017, until January 15, 2018, by MTGCommander.net. This category is for cards that simply make other cards accessible either by putting additional cards in hand or manipulating the library.
The problem is that each extra card lowers your odds of drawing the specific card you need at the right moment. If you put 70 or 80 cards into a format that has a 60-card minimum, you’ll often struggle to see your best cards or your key combos in a reasonable time frame. It can lead to frustrating draws, especially when you’re counting on that one card to clinch a game. The Commander format is all about picking your hero and building a deck around them. In this casual, multiplayer format, you choose a legendary creature to serve as your commander and build the rest of your deck around their color identity and unique abilities.
Design Your Own MTG Cards
Players are only allowed one of each card in their deck, with the exception of basic lands, but they can use cards from throughout Magic’s history. The minimum deck size for the Standard format is 60 cards, and that’s all you’ll see in other players’ lists most of the time. This means that you at least have to have 60 cards in your deck, including lands, before it can legally be played in any event. Technically you can have as many as you want (assuming you can shuffle it in your hands), but that’s a talk for another time. Deck size might seem like a small detail, but it shapes how your deck plays out and how often you see your best cards. Magic is all about balancing mana, synergy, and strategy.
Do you have to have exactly 60 cards in a Magic the Gathering deck?
Whether you’re opening booster packs at a casual Draft or refining a constructed deck for your next event, it helps to remember that more cards usually means less consistency. If you want to explore more tips, you can always check external links or community forums, though I won’t list them here. Above all, have fun building and tweaking your Magic deck. After all, one deck might look perfect on paper, but the real test is how it handles in play. If you find yourself adding too many cards, consider scaling back to get that competitive edge—and a better shot at drawing the card you need when you need it.
In the next few articles, we’ll start digging into the different ways to express yourself in this community through deck building. At one point, Wizards started to embrace the format and consider it in its market strategies, releasing new cards and specific mechanics for it, but it leaves the control over more structural decisions to this Committee. Some cards in your deck are just better than others.
For a change to be sanctioned, it must have the approval of at least half of the community. Details on how voting works can be found on the format’s official website. No matter the outcome, Commander gives players the tools to express themselves through strategy, skill, and a whole lot of deck building fun. During gameplay, a player may choose to attack any other player, regardless of their position on the table, and can also choose to attack multiple different players during their attack phase. Permanents, spells, and abilities can also target any player around the table (as long as they don’t explicitly say they must be used on “you”).
Yorion, Sky Nomad forces players to build mtg combo at an 80-card minimum when it’s set as their companion. But cards like Battle of Wits reward you for having an absurd deck size in the hundreds. If your gameplan revolves around strategies like that then you absolutely should play more than the minimum required deck size.
Sure your consistency is a little off, but this is to decide whether or not certain cards contribute the way you want them to when you do see them. Next you can cut cards by ranking how much you want to see them in your opening hand or during a game. There are lots of ways to consider your deck size during construction. In the Commander format, decks are usually referred to by their Commander, since that’s usually enough to determine a deck’s color and archetype.
You may cast your commander from the command zone for its normal costs plus the “commander tax”, an additional for each previous time it has been cast from the command zone this way (initially an additional cost of 0). If we took away the deck size limitation, I don’t think much would change. Most people would keep building 100 card decks, even if they had the option to add more. With that in mind, would it be so bad to change things to requiring a 100 card minimum including commanders?
When you build decks in a Draft or Sealed event, you typically rely on basic lands—like Plains, Islands, Swamps, Mountains, or Forests—that the event organizer provides in unlimited quantities. Basic lands don’t count toward the “up to four copies” rule, so you can include the same quantity of each basic land you need to balance your mana. But once you move past 40 cards, you risk seeing your win condition less often. That’s why limited play usually stays tight around the 40-card minimum.
Every card in your Commander deck must only use mana symbols that also appear on your commander. Battle your friends with powerful Commander decks, ready to play right out of the box. Each deck contains 2 foil Legendary Creature cards and everything you need to play Magic’s most popular multiplayer format. How many cards you can play in Magic deck depends on the format.
Why Stick to the Minimum Deck Size?
It’s important to remember that different formats have different deck sizes. I’m here today to go over the rules when it comes to deck sizes and discuss the strategy behind deck sizes when building your decks. While cEDH is a way to play Commander competitively without the pretense of creating a new format, Conquest would be the first attempt to do so without the fear of changing a few things.
In January of 1994 the Duelists’ Convocation International was formed, and along with it came sanctioned tournaments and some rule changes. The most notable change (other than the banned and restricted list) was the official ruling that Constructed decks had to be 60 cards at minimum. Supplementary decks, or side decks, are separated card decks that may be played in casual games to enhance the gaming experience.